ASIC will not take its pursuit of Westpac over the bank’s alleged responsible lending failures any further, announcing yesterday it will not seek special leave to appeal to the High Court over the matter. Late last month, the Full Federal Court rejected ASIC’s appeal against a 2019 ruling that Westpac had not breached its responsible lending obligations. The regulator said it will review its regulatory guidance on responsible lending to take account of any implications from the court ruling. Australian Finance Group has raised A$700 million through an issue of residential mortgage-backed securities – its largest RMBS transaction to date. AFG did not refer to any AOFM involvement in the deal. Pricing was a little tighter than some other recent deals, with a margin of 95 basis points over the bank bill swap rate of the $230 million of A1-S notes (weighted average life 0.9 years) and 145 bps over BBSW on the $382.5 million of A1-L notes (WAL 2.9 years). More than half of ANZ’s mortgage customers “have not seen a change in their income level, while around 11 per cent of our customers have actually seen an increase in income since the pandemic hit for various reasons,” Mark Hand, the bank’s head of retail and commercial said in an interview for ANZ bluenotes. “A collection of customers’ income is off a little bit - around 20 per cent. And then there are certain customers who unfortunately have seen their income drop to zero.” The Auckland High Court has fined two remittance companies a total of NZ$7.5 million for breaching AML legislation. Auckland-based OTT Trading Group Ltd has been fined $3.1m and Christchurch-based MSI Group Ltd $4.4m, following civil proceedings by the Department of Internal Affairs taken under New Zealand’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act. OTT and MSI were part of a group providing money remittance and foreign exchange services in both New Zealand and Australia.